


Life And Limb

by ProfessorFlimflam



Category: Holby City
Genre: Berena Final Countdown, Bernie Lives, F/F, Fix It Fic, Gore, Trust, countdown: trust, i mean obviously, operations - Freeform, pffft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22284157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorFlimflam/pseuds/ProfessorFlimflam
Relationships: Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe
Comments: 9
Kudos: 99
Collections: The Final Countdown





	Life And Limb

When Bernie Wolfe returned to the UK, it was with a blaze of publicity, an incredulous military escort and a leg that she knew she would lose.

The publicity was courtesy of her extraordinary story: thrown thirty yards or more by a bomb blast in Mogadishu; buried under rubble, her leg trapped beneath a slab of concrete it took five men to lift; taken unconscious to hospital after hospital in hope of saving first her life and then her leg - and all the while sunk in a coma that seemed determined to hold her in its loving embrace for eternity. 

In the meantime, a well-intentioned but poorly trained rescue worker had found her military ID, flung from her by the force of the blast, and had looped it around the neck of the body it had landed by, assuming them to belong together. A secondary shift of rubble had sent the rescue team hurrying for cover, taking the injured woman with them, leaving the dead behind to be covered in concrete and dust. It would be weeks before the recovery teams would find the body of a Swedish woman named Karin Wahlstet, but who bore the ID tags of Major Berenice Wolfe.

It was the coma that saved her life. Her last stop on her unconscious tour of the hospitals of East Africa found her in the care of a highly competent neurosurgeon who was finally able to stabilise her and bring her out of the dark. When she awoke, her throat and lips dryer than the arid land she had made her home, her first words were not the usual confused query as to where she was or what had happened: nor were they of her children. When she woke after weeks of nothingness, Bernie’s first words were, “Tell Serena.”

***

And now Bernie was coming home: home to Holby, to Cameron and Charlotte: home to Serena. For there was no doubt for either of them now that they must be together, whatever that meant for them both. They had spoken briefly by phone - Bernie was too weak to talk for long - and agreed that there would be no more running, no more digging in of heels: whatever else life threw at them now, they would face it together.

As soon as she was in any fit state to travel, Bernie was evacuated straight to Holby, and it felt very much like déjà vu. She was in a much worse way than she had been on her first evac, though, and she was rushed straight through to ITU.

Serena, of course, had been waiting just beyond the helipad, but Bernie had been sedated for the flight and was oblivious to everything around her. She was so very pale and thin, though how she could be any thinner, Serena hardly knew. She looked so much older than when they had parted, but recovery would smooth the lines in her face, the gauntness of her cheeks. God alone knew what state her mind was in, though - the explosion, the injuries, the long period of unconsciousness... She had vowed to Serena with typical brusqueness that she was absolutely fine, just a bit banged up, but Serena knew that there would be repercussions if she tried to repress the horror of what had happened, and she would be there to help her through it, if it meant dragging her to therapy herself.

As soon as Bernie was settled into ITU, Serena was at her bedside, checking her vitals, monitoring her fluids as though the team were mere first aiders. They tolerated her fussy interference, knowing some of the history between these two, and they were largely left to themselves for a while. Serena held Bernie’s hand, smoothed the lank hair back from her forehead, settled her when she struggled against the effects of the fading sedation and shushed her when she tried to talk.

“There’s no rush, darling. Sleep now, just rest. I’m here, you’re safe now.”

***

It was a few hours before she was brought down to AAU, where Ric had decreed sternly that there was to be no fuss, no homecoming parade: what Bernie needed was rest, and urgent attention from himself and whoever he considered best equipped to treat her. The worst of her injuries had been treated in the field, but he wanted to run a thorough set of diagnostics to ensure that nothing had been overlooked, and that everything had been done as well as it could have been. The gravest concern was her leg.

He spoke gently to her, kindly. They bore a deep affection for each other, and knew each other well enough to tell - and to face - the truth.

“It’s pretty bad, Bernie. Whoever scraped you up did enough to save your life, but your leg... I’m going to be brutally honest if you can bear it? I’m not hopeful. I gather they used a fairly crude cauterising procedure to stop the bleeding, and my suspicion is that your blood flow has been seriously compromised.” 

He gently probed her poor wasted leg, examining an area above the knee with especially close attention. “It’s hard to tell quite how bad it is - you’ve been inactive for so long that there’s pretty severe muscle atrophy, which is obscuring the picture somewhat. What I’d really like to do is open you up and do a little exploratory work, see if we can’t improve things a bit. But I have to warn you, there’s a very real likelihood we’ll need to amputate. I’m so sorry, Bernie.”

His hand moved to cover her thin fingers, and she made a fist, which was less effort than saying what she couldn’t find the words for.

“Odds?” She rasped, and he knew what she meant.

“If I were a betting man - which I’m not - I’d say seen or eight to one against. I’ll do what I can, but you’re the very last person I’d try to soft soap - you’ve seen injuries like this, and you know the potential outcomes.”

She nodded, and closed her eyes. He thought she was weeping, then that she had fallen back into the sleep which was her constant companion just now, but she was summoning the strength for a whole sentence.

“I want Serena to scrub in.”

Ric had been expecting this, and was firm. 

“Absolutely not. You know why. You think I’d let Serena put herself through that? What if we fail? What if the worst happens - and you know that’s a possibility. I won’t ask her to do that.”

But Major Wolfe was in the room now.

“I need to talk to her, now. Go.”

He bowed his head, gave his head a little shake, but it was of defeat, not conflict.

“Fine. You can talk to her, but she’ll say the same as me - she shouldn’t operate on you.”

***

Bernie had pleaded and cajoled as best she could in broken sentences, pleading looks and with the touch of tired, dry hands. Eventually she found the one thing that would sway Serena.

“Do you trust me?”

And without hesitation, Serena replied as she always had done.

“Always.”

Bernie nodded. She spoke more surely now, pausing to catch her breath between each short sentence.

“Then accept my decision. Go in, find out what’s going on. Make the best decision - for me. I know I could lose my leg. I won’t blame you.”

Serena looked at her, and her gaze was grave, but there was a light in her eyes that had not been there for a long time.

“Same question, Bernie. Do you trust me?”

Bernie squeezed the hands that held her own.

“Life and limb.”

***

According to the whiteboard, it was Mr Griffin’s theatre, Ms Campbell assisting, but it soon became clear that only the finest vascular surgeon was going to make any headway with the mess that the lifesaving surgery had made of Bernie’s leg. Serena nudged Ric out of the way, and he stood back without complaint, assisting where he could, taking over briefly when she needed to rest her eyes. But Ric himself was not long out of surgery, and after the first five hours, Serena looked up to see a queue of their colleagues waiting to relieve him.

She scanned the little crowd. Any other day she would have berated them for ignoring their own lists, but she took only the time needed to process the options, and spoke a single word. 

“Jac.”

“Good choice, Campbell,” came the reply through the intercom. What seemed to Serena like hours later, Jac Naylor had gowned up and scrubbed in, and Ric went to take a nap in the on call room in case he should be needed again later.

Jac strode in, her aura of confidence and braggadocio doing wonders for Serena’s flagging energy. She took a look at the screen then had a nurse lower her loups for a good close up look at Bernie’s leg. She whistled behind her mask.

“All that knitting paying off at last, then, Campbell? Nice work. What are your next steps? I’d say we give this section here a demolition order - it’s too badly damaged to save. But if we graft from here - hang on, what’s that?”

With the smallest retractor at her disposal, she carefully lifted aside the matted mess of unrecoverable tissue and indicated a small dark mass. Serena’s eyes rose to meet her’s from beneath her leopard print cap.

“Blood clot - small but deadly. Wonder how long that’s been there? Could date back to the injury; could be new. Either way, it’s just waiting to swim upstream and detonate, isn’t it? Will you do the honours?”

For Serena was every bit as tired as Ric, and as fiercely as she wanted to save Bernie single handedly, she had the sense to know that there was no safer pair of hands in this hospital than Jac Naylor’s. She took the opportunity to relax a little, and to glance for the first time from the carnage that she had so far managed to depersonalise, up to the head of the table. 

Under the anaesthetic, Bernie looked less haggard, more like herself, and Serena longed to tuck in the lock of hair that had escaped the surgical cap that Bernie wore. Honestly, how did she manage to get her hair in such a mess even while sedated? But she kept her hands raised and clean, and when Jac had finished, dropping the clot into a dish, she went back in to continue the work of knitting Bernie’s veins and her own heart back together.

***

Bernie was, if anything, a worse patient than she had been first time round. Her physiotherapy was gruelling and tough, but her physiotherapist was tougher. 

“You’d think I was still in the army,” she grumbled.

“Then follow your orders like a good soldier,” Anna replied grimly, putting her through her paces. “It was you that said you’d leave this hospital walking or not at all - I’m sure I can arrange for the latter one way or another.”

***

She would never fully recover the strength in her leg, but it would carry her through the rest of her days. She would walk, perhaps run, she would stand in theatre and she would take Guinevere on her lap. She would not see active service again, and for that, both she and Serena gave thanks.

“So. No more heroics in war zones, agreed?” 

Serena had helped her pack her things away from her long stay on the wards, and they were making their way to the lobby.

“Agreed. And no more ordering by the bottle - deal?”

“Deal.” Serena smiled at her, her heart so full of love and joy that she would have agreed never to drink again had Bernie asked it of her.

“So, what do we do now? Where do we go from here?” Bernie stood with a little effort, taking the arm that Serena offered her.

Holding her firmly, as much to convince herself that Bernie was alive and here as to support her, Serena smiled at her.

“We walk into our future - together.”


End file.
